Designer Spotlight: Pigeon Coop Designs

Pigeon Coop Designs is a Canada-based Etsy shop that bills itself as having nature inspired cross stitch patterns and kits. I get a little of a folk art, retro feel from their designs, which emphasize natural landscapes and animals.

In fact, I just shared one of their patterns the other day in the fox cross stitch collection, not realizing I also had them on the schedule to feature.

Because they are based in Canada, a lot of the landscapes and landmarks featured are found in that country. Though of course you could stitch up a raccoon in a trash bin with any city’s name on the side, and the four seasons of Quebec could be any place with mountains, trees and a river if you don’t happen to have a connection to Canada.

You’ll also find more general nature designs like shells and ocean animals, lots of birds, some desert creatures and landscapes, trees and mountains and more.

One design that caught my eye was this flower farm design, which reminds me a little of quilting, I guess because of the bands of flowers. It uses 11 colors and the design is 100 by 91 stitches. As charted the project is square, but you can put it in a 7 inch round hoop and it just covers a bit at the edges.

While the emphasis here is on nature and landscape designs, there are a few urban designs (as mentioned above) and a handful of patterns marked as holiday. As of this writing they are all Christmas/winter themed, and there are birds and other animals here as well as cozy looking log cabins, a quilt block inspired design and more.

Check out Pigeon Coop Designs on Etsy if these look like projects you would like to do. I’d love to hear if you make something of theirs!

[Photo: Pigeon Coop Designs]

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35+ Sunflower Cross Stitch Patterns

It’s back to school time where I live, which I always feel like is a great time to learn a new skill or take a deeper dive into something that you might not have learned a lot about before.

Usually when we are learning new hobbies we only know what we know. We learn the terms that we encounter, the skills that come up in the projects that we want to make. It’s not that we don’t care about other basics or different approaches, we just learn what we need to know to make what we want to make.

And that’s totally fine, but sometimes it’s a good idea to go back and review the basics or learn the things you might have missed the first time.

In that spirit I share this post from Caterpillar Cross Stitch all about basic cross stitch terms that every stitcher ought to know.

Did you know that the little bundle of thread you use for cross stitch is called a skein, for example? Or the difference between grid size and design area in a pattern? Or that working complete stitches one at a time is known as the English method? (I didn’t know that one! Apparently doing half of the stitch across the row and then coming back and finishing it is the Danish method. Who knew?)

There’s also a little bit about getting started with confidence that might be helpful at any skill level.

So what I’m saying is, even if you feel like you know a lot about cross stitch already, head over to Caterpillar Cross Stitch and check out their list of terms and make sure you know them all. If nothing else you’ll feel a little smarter, either because you already knew them all or you learned something new!

And if you do learn something new, I’d love to hear about it.

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